Tots of Thought

As a partner of a bespoke shoe start-up, I have always been fascinated by the fact that nearly all the potential investors and benefactors we talk to almost always ask about our mission statement before anything else.  “Why is this so important to them?” I would ask myself.  I found no readily convincing answers so I decided to find out as much as I could about why potential business partners prize that piece of information above all others.  The Oxford Dictionary defines a mission statement as the official statement of the aims of a company or organization. A business mentor told me it is the map that prefigures the destination of every business entity.  Being my usual self, I was slow to agree with my mentor because I thought businesses could forge admirable mission statements and not necessarily live by them.  “In that case, failure will become inevitable” he assured me.  Jack Welch, Chairman and CEO of General Electric from 1981...

The news broke like a contagion across the world and grief seeped through the veins of the internet into our heavy hearts. What started as tweets gathered momentum and in a matter of minutes, Kobe was trending. It was all true. He was gone, together with his 13-year-old daughter, Gigi, and seven other passengers in a helicopter crash. Cruel world! The shock is still raw and I type these words with faltering fingers. Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gigi. I couldn’t process it. It didn’t make sense to me. These are the kind of stories that unsettle our minds by testing faiths and uprooting beliefs. Kobe was a good man; a faithful father and husband, a great example of a human being. Why did he have to die so painfully? What happened in there as he watched his life, that of his daughter and the others fade right before his eyes? I kept wondering without answers. Hours later, I saw one status update that really hit me. “This is just life. None of us will make it out alive anyway” i...

Ever wondered why many institutions of higher learning have Latin slogans? Did you know that many common English expressions have Latin roots? And, are you aware that some of our grandparents studied Latin in school right here in Ghana? It may be unpopular in our time but the Latin language was once at the heart of Western civilization. In those days, when the Great Roman Empire was at the height of its might, Latin was, to a large extent, the language of the world.  The ability to speak Latin was the high watermark of the sophisticated mind and the language stood out notably as the chief means by which scholars and philosophers prepared and presented their thoughts to the world.  Although it is considered by many as a dead language today, remnants of Latinate expressions lie like fossils in the strata of our speech. In fact, we use more Latin expressions than we probably realize. Agenda, alias, memo, vice versa, per diem, status quo and et cetera are all Latin wo...

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is one of those rare personalities who influenced the world so much that their names have become synonymous with a cause. Through his complete commitment to civil rights activism and the evangelism of non-violence, he inspired a whole generation to believe in the possibility of dreams once thought impossible.  With unrivalled eloquence, Dr. King encouraged people of colour suffering social and economic injustice to keep believing and persuaded their oppressors to join them in peaceful brotherhood. He believed that "we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Thus, Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."  Of course, not everyone agreed with him. He was imprisoned and threatened many times. On the evening of April 4, 1968, while standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee, where he had gone to lead a protest march in sympathy with striking garbage workers of th...

The concept of Time Management is, without doubt, one of the most popular themes in self-development courses and motivational lectures.  The idea has gained such widespread acceptance that it features prominently in many academic course contents. Outside of academia, the relevance attached to time management is evidenced by the many invitations given to speakers to address the subject in different organizations.  Perhaps, you've sat in a meeting where a speaker dealt eloquently with the topic and highlighted a miscellany of tips you have to imbibe to manage time effectively. Guess what? You are not alone. I have also been in many such meetings and listened to many passionate preachers of this idea.  However, prolonged reflections on the definitions of time management have led me to wonder if the whole concept has not been given the wrong designation and, by extension, misled most of us.  Let me issue a disclaimer at this point: I am convinced of the ...